Me!?!?!?, hail no, I'm not that crazy lady. Good heavens she's a kook. . . . Well, okay, so maybe it might be me. ;-) If we recall, in my very first response to lottamoxie the very first line in my reply was: "Depends on how you want to define "match". Depends on what *kind* of color you're talking about." Just like almost everything else in color world, you gotta take it one person, one room, one color, one *kind* of paint at a time -- there is not much that is one-size fits all. I am so on board with not being able to "color match" the uber brands. If there is parade to raise awareness to prevent people from wasting their time and money doing so, I volunteer to carry the front banner. In my last post I talked about the two women at the Home Depot. In that example I would be the lady with the tragic trainwreck F&B color matching experience. I, personally, could never be the tickled pink woman who saved $20 and walks away thinking she got her boutique paint & color at a bargain price. As always, I can tell ya exactly why THAT scenario as well as the project from the Kennon site is different than lottamoxie's specific "color matching" endeavor that we have been discussing so far. Get comfy. :D 1. Lotta is looking at matching a Ben Moore color in Sherwin Williams Duration. The source that set her first visual benchmark for that color was a regular-size, ink on paper, paint chip. She hadn't seen that color in or on another house. 2. We're not talking about any extenuating circumstances here with paint or color. It's not an uber shee-shee final finish paint base like from Fine Paints or F&B, and she's not looking at complex color like C2 or a full spectrum. 3. Color benchmark that's been set by the color information she's been exposed to about that color deployed on structure to this point is normal and limited. (she's just seen a chip). Developing her expectations about what a "color match" means is easy. That is low hangin' fruit for a color consultant. (No offense lotta. I don't think you're a fruit, it's just a figure of speech) 4. Lotta mentioned an awareness, a desire, to make sure that the vibe and visual she is getting from that chip will translate into her gallons of paint. She's not looking to make sure she likes the color, she wants to make sure she GETS her color. Reassurance, like from PG, might be all someone needs. As a reminder PG told lotta that "close enough is good enough for most people". She understood what he said. What happened was that her expectations for "color match" relaxed and were now clarified and defined. Anxiety addressed. Thanks to Paintguy she now knows to expect close enough and she's decided to be okay with the parameters of "color match" that PG helped define. She's proceeding down that path. Moon added to the reassurance and has given her some pointers for along the way. Circling back around to the kooky lady on the Kennon site who says that full spectrum colors can't be "matched" and clarifying further just how that is different from lotta's situation: Kennon, Citron, C2 and some other brand's color chips are real paint, not ink on paper. They're also bigger than your standard paint chip. These factors set tougher color matching benchmarks, more refined color expectations to deal with and meet. This is one of the BIG things that painter in the story on the Kennon site chose to ignore. When trying to match regular to full spectrum, it involves differing mentalities, methods, philosophies and processes of mixing color. Lotta is going from Ben to Sherwin. Different paint products, but they are both essentially playing the game of color by the same rules and those rules include black and fewer colorants. Whatever else might be different between the brands, their color philosophy is the same. This is the other BIG thing that the painter in the story on the Kennon site chose to ignore. The Kennon colors use ICI bases and ICI colorants. The painter underestimated just how much color philosophy and mixing technique could matter. The leap from a Ben Moore color to a Sherwin Williams paint is not a big one from a color matching perspective. The leap from say, Citron, to Pratt & Lambert or whatever *regular* brand would be a much bigger leap due to many of those technical factors mentioned but ALSO because of color mixing practices. There is no *dubious practice* to color matching. There is just a lot of confusion surrounding what is fair and reasonable to expect in each unique color matching circumstance. The confusion is compounded by the fact that there is no resource that properly educates the consumer of color on how to buy color. That's because it is complicated, involved, and a whole lot of work to do so and there are not many people who are truly equipped to do it. As you've found there is all kinds of stuff out there about paint - because that's the easy part - but the information about architectural color, not Color Theory 101, is sparse and is heavily sprinkled with misinformation. The reason for that confusion, once again, can be attributed to the fact that there is little in color world that is one size fits all. Just because it may be difficult - almost impossible to match one particular color or finish does not mean that "color matching" will fail 100% of the time nor does it mean that there is no such thing as a "color match". CalGal, I think I addressed all the really good points you've brought up in your post(s). If not, post away with more. I could talk and talk and talk and talk about color! Maybe I really am a kook. :~D We just need to be sure that lottamoxie doesn't feel like her thread is being hijacked.

I saw a lovely kitchen on the hgtv forums that had cabinets similar to yours. Their paint color was BM 'Toasted pecan'. I liked it so much I went and got the paint strip because I was thinking about it for my kitchen (only to find we're being relocated in a month or two). It looks awfully dark on the paint strip, so I was thinking about the one up from it, 'Tuscany'. I just held that strip beside SW Whole Wheat (don't have a Tobacco Road) and either one looks like a good complement. It's a reddish-brown, "terra cotta-like", very similar to another of my favorites, BM 'Audubon Russet'. It would look great too. Tracey

Custom matching is possible. Computer matching is not 100% reliable, you need a good paint store with staff that have some color skilz. For every successful person with a "I walked in to Wal Mart and got my perfect color" story, there's another one for whom trying to get a color matched was a complete nightmare. Be prepared. Definitely have chip in hand. Make sure their "sample" is dry when you compare it to your chip and do your visual color checks outside or at least by a window -- north light is best. Lastly, if they can't nail the color to your satisfaction, you are not obligated to buy the paint. The manufacturers are all over the custom color matching thing, but sometimes the individual stores get a little cranky about it. You don't have to settle for close enough, no matter how whiny or intimidating the paint store staff can get. They all advertise the fact that they can match any other brand's color, so they should expect to be held to a quality standard.

Our kitchen Reno has been a nightmare. Our cabinets were installed 12 weeks ago and the job still isn’t complete. We are waiting for missing drawer fronts that had to be refinished because of dents and flaws in them that couldn’t be touched up. Many pieces damaged in transport. Peeling veneer on fridge panel already repaired. My issue now is our island. The island looked almost flawless except for quite a few paint bubbles when installed two months ago. Originally, the cabinet maker accidentally had the island pieces painted white to match the rest of our cabinets. It was meant to be Navy. They repainted on top of this (sprayed in factory). Now two months in they are chipping and showing wear. You can see the white paint underneath. We have scarcely been home this summer and have not even really used the kitchen and already it’s chipping. Could this be from the extra paint? I don’t know if they primed under the navy but they certainly didn’t sand the doors down and start from scratch. The paint bubbles also show a spec of white underneath. Has me worried that wherever the bubbles are, it will wear off and be white after cleaning.